


Of Life, Love and Death. But not necessarily in that order.

by ignite



Category: Rooster Teeth/Achievement Hunter/Funhaus RPF
Genre: M/M, Pushing Daisies AU, Some angst, a lot of mush, this is mushy angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-05
Updated: 2016-09-05
Packaged: 2018-08-13 06:30:51
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,962
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7966153
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ignite/pseuds/ignite
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It did not matter how much the lad prayed ; James Ryan Haywood was thirty-two years, seven months, nineteen days, five hours and forty-eight seconds old, and would never be a second older.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Of Life, Love and Death. But not necessarily in that order.

**Author's Note:**

> This is an old story that I improved a little. Obviously a Pushing Daisies AU, with its unusual mix of fluff and morbidity.

At this very moment in the city of Austin, Texas, Gavin David Free was twenty-six years, two months, two days and four hours old as he waited in front of the Rooster Teeth office.

The person he was waiting for, one James Ryan Haywood, thirty-two years, seven months, nineteen days and five hours old, was driving towards said office at a reasonable speed. Unfortunately for him, someone else was not.

The impact between the two cars made an earsplitting noise. The entire street looked out of the window in fear, and Gavin’s heart stopped in a metaphorical sense, though it felt anything but metaphorical to him. So much so that for a critical second he actually thought he was dead.

When it became apparent that he was not, Gavin watched the unknown driver get out of his car looking somewhat shocked but perfectly unharmed.

Ryan, meanwhile, stayed inside his own car and Gavin found himself running towards the vehicle, his heart now pounding madly in his chest in a vehement protest against all the horrible thoughts that were invading his head.

He tore the door open and looked at the still body of James Ryan Haywood slumped over the dashboard. He stubbornly refused to answer Gavin’s silent prayers for him to give a sign of life. People were starting to run towards the accident shouting all kinds of things that were making Gavin’s ears buzz.

It did not matter how much the lad prayed ; James Ryan Haywood was thirty-two years, seven months, nineteen days, five hours and forty-eight seconds old, and would never be a second older.

Voices were calling Gavin’s name. He had to decide what to do very quickly. His heart was now hurting and Gavin simply wanted the pain to stop. The only way to do that was to touch Ryan’s limp hand.

A slight electric jolt went through Gavin’s arm. Ryan woke up with a start and a gasp followed by a moan and a groan. Gavin had the time to see blue eyes blink at him confusedly before he was pulled away from the car and EMTs took over.

Gavin let one Geoff Lazer Ramsey lead him away. Geoff was talking but Gavin was not listening, he was counting. Twenty-five seconds. 

“Gavin? You hear me?”

Thirty two second.

“Gavin it’s okay, he’s fine, he’s alive.”

Gavin was very aware of that fact. Forty-nine seconds.

“Damn it… Can someone grab an EMT for him?”

Fifty-nine seconds… and sixty.

Mr Adams had been forty-eight years, eleven months, twenty five minutes and two seconds old when his car collided with Ryan’s. He was forty-eight years, eleven months, forty-two minutes and fifty-eight seconds old when he keeled over, dead, in the middle of the street, surrounded by confused medical personnel.

Gavin felt a fleeting pang of guilt, but it quickly disappeared as he saw Ryan sitting on the back of an ambulance.

Then there was an EMT in front of him and asking him all kinds of questions, and Gavin had to focus on that instead.

***************************

The facts were these :

Gavin David Free had at first believed himself to be, if not boring, at least decently conventional. His childhood was as mundane as they got, filled with summer afternoons spent playing in the garden and winter mornings spent making hot chocolate.

This illusion of normality was shattered when young Gavin’s family pet died. Lloyd had been five years, thirty-six hours and five seconds old when she was hit by a car. The car did not stop, but Lloyd’s life very much did. Gavin witnessed the accident, and for the first time in his young life was confronted with the finality of death.

Gavin had crouched next to the cat and, overcome with grief, touched the animal’s paw. A slight electric current went up his arm. Lloyd twitched, meowed, and got back to her paws.

This was how young Gavin discovered he had a very much unconventional power : he could bring dead things back to life.

Through years of experimenting -most of those experiments being accidental, since young Gavin was very reluctant to kill for the sake of science, he discovered a few other properties : touch a dead thing once, bring them back to life. Touch the thing twice, and it will die again -forever. If young Gavin did not touch the dead thing twice before a minute had passed, then, according to rules set in what might have been stone, something else had to die in its stead.

When Lloyd had been brought back to life for over a minute, a squirrel fell out of a nearby tree. When one day, in class, a dead fly fell onto Gavin’s desk and it was brought back to life for over a minute, a spider stopped living. And when one James Ryan Haywood was brought back to life for over a minute, Mr Adams was struck by a heart attack. It was the way of life -and death, as it were.

Gavin had vowed a long time ago to never bring something back to life ever again. And in case he did do it, accidentally no doubt, then he had vowed to always touch it a second time before the one minute mark had passed.

On this day as he sat in the Achievement Hunter office, watching Ryan sitting on the couch and talking with people who were making sure he felt all right, Gavin had broken both of those vows for the first time in ten years, three months, and four seconds.

Guilt kept trying to worm its way into his mind but the thought that Ryan was still alive and was getting away with nothing more than what appeared to be a slight concussion, as opposed to the massive brain damage that had originally killed him, acted as a shield against all negative emotions. Mr Adams had -and this had been Geoff’s diagnosis- been an asshole. Driving far too fast and without looking at the road, he would have killed someone else eventually. 

Geoff offered to drive Ryan home, Gavin offered to go with them. 

Thirty minutes and one and a half miles later, they were all standing in the middle of Ryan’s living room, all of them alive, and Geoff, after checking once more on his friend’s health, was about to go home himself.

“Can I stay?” asked Gavin. “Just… just a little while. Just to make sure you’re fine. I’ll take a taxi home…”

“Huh… sure,” said Ryan, though he looked taken aback. “Yeah. If you want to.”

Geoff left them. Now they were only two people standing in the living room, all alive, and Ryan was looking at him like a cat who’s waiting to see if the ball of yarn is going to start moving on its own or if he has to do it himself.

Gavin was not sure what he’d wanted to say then. Maybe some platitude about life, death, and things in-between, as people often did in those sort of situations.

What came out of his mouth instead, was “You died and I brought you back to life so now we can never touch again and I thought you should know that because we work together and if we ever get in contact you’ll die forever and I can’t bring you back twice.”

He then took a deep breath, having forgotten to do that prior to babbling away one of the longest sentence he’d ever said in his life.

Ryan kept watching him, though now his expression was more that of a cat watching a dog trying to eat its own tail and wondering what on earth was wrong with that animal.

Then he said “… Sorry?”, and Gavin sighed.

Warm July afternoons in Texas meant insects. Insects meant Gavin would not have a hard time demonstrating his rather unusual skill.

“Come on,” he said, walking to the garden.

He took off one shoe, aimed, and got a kill in the form of a fat fly. It was thankfully not too damaged, and when Gavin took the little cadaver in his hand with obvious reluctance, it wriggled immediately back to life under Ryan’s contemplative eyes. It tried to fly away but couldn’t manage with only one functional wing, and fell back into Gavin’s hand -which killed it instantly.

Gavin let the poor insect fall to the ground and looked back at Ryan.

“See? I bring things back to life with one touch. With another touch, they die again, forever. So if we touch…”

“I die again, forever?” guessed Ryan.

“Yeah…”

“… I think I need to lie down…”

Which he did. Gavin waited anxiously, sitting on an armchair while Ryan lay on the couch and pondered what had just happened to him.

The result of this ponderation came in the form of Ryan sitting back up and looking at Gavin with a very serious look in his eyes.

“So you just saved my life, is what this boils down to.”

“… Sort of. I think I more stole your death than saved your life.”

“Semantics,” said Ryan.

“What cement?” asked Gavin.

“Shut up,” suggested Ryan. “I’m still having a sort of hard time adjusting to the fact that one, I died, and two, magic exists. I knew you were weird but that… that’s a whole other level of weird. Wait…” Ryan frowned. “Why did you even do this? I know you know people who’ve died. You’ve gone to funerals before. Why me?”

It was now Gavin’s time to ponder. He remembered all the ups and downs his heart had gone through as he’d witnessed the accident. This had been a feeling he definitely had not felt when assisting to an aunt’s funerals. It had not been the same sort of sadness, not the same sort of pain. 

“My heart was hurting,” he said honestly.

“What, like a heart attack?”

“Maybe. I brought you back and it… stopped hurting.”

In the moment that followed, Ryan bit his lips, scratched his nose, mumbled out loud that it was odd for a dead man to scratch his nose, put his elbows on his knees, crossed his hands, put his chin on those crossed hands, and blinked at Gavin.

“Thank you,” he said finally, and his words were so heavy with meaning that it made Gavin’s cheeks heat up.

***************************************************

It is a fact long established that having a gift, be it changing water into wine or bringing people back to life with a touch of your finger, doesn’t end well. Hiding is often preferred, gifted men and women crouching in shadows to avoid the cruel reality of their abnormality.

Young Gavin had studied this fact through books, comics, TV shows and everything else he could get his gifted little hands upon. He had then decided it was not the right path to take.

There is an art to hiding in plain sight, a knack, and Gavin definitely had it. If only because that knack involved being passive and not caring an awful lot about what is happening around you, so that you do not feel the urge to use your gift all the time.

Passive was good, passive protected Gavin. This was a point Ryan really, really did not understand.

“So you haven’t brought anyone else back to life?”

“You. And Lloyd.”

“Your cat?”

“I’m very careful not to touch her again.”

“Are we really the only two?”

“Maybe.”

“Is that a no?”

“It’s not a yes.”

Ryan had been offered a whole week off work. He only took three days, and two of those were spent mostly sitting at home with Gavin, who had readily accepted Ryan’s offer to stay the first night -and then the second night, and asking him questions with an interest that varied from one of a mad scientist to one of a very concerned psychiatrist.

The irony that the dead man brought to life was the one doing the comforting instead of being the comfortee was not lost on Gavin, but he suspected that asking questions was Ryan’s own nerdy way of coping.

“Can I touch dead things now?”

“Huh, you can touch them, doesn’t mean they’re going to be alive again. I didn’t transfer my gift to you.”

and 

“Now I think about it I’ve never seen you eat meat… Do you eat meat?”

“Nope…”

and

“How are we going to do at work?”

Gavin had thought about this particular problem. He had thought about it the first night he’d spent on Ryan’s couch, awake from dusk to dawn while his mind mulled this over. He’d thought about it the second night too. He was now disgustingly tired, but he had also found a solution :

“We’ll be careful.”

Ryan tilted his head to the side.

“That’s your solution?”

“Well, if we’re careful there’s no reason we’ll touch each other again.”

“You do realize we work in close quarters.”

“Just… be careful. Or I quit and find work somewhere else…”

“No!”

Gavin felt an internal little touch of relief. Resigning would have been the last thing he’d ever wanted to do. He quite liked his job, and he also quite liked Ryan, and having the two of them combined made him quite happy. Resigning would have crushed his heart, and his heart had already gone through a lot these past few days.

Lost in his thoughts, he failed to notice Ryan stepping closer to him. But he felt the hand touching him, and he jumped so violently that the armchair he’d been sitting in was thrown out of balance and fell over backwards, sending Gavin rolling on the tiled floor.

He heard a light chuckle and as he raised his eyes, he saw Ryan looming over him with his hands hidden inside the long sleeves of his sweater.

“I can touch you through things.”

“I hate you,” grumbled Gavin, even though it was untrue. “You are a terrible person.”

Ryan kept chuckling.

***************************************************

After making Ryan promise to never do that ever again, and being very tempted to print a legally-binding contract and make him sign it when Gavin saw that he did not entirely mean it when he said ‘sure’, Gavin went back to his own home that night. 

Back at work Geoff asked him a couple of questions, which Gavin answered vaguely, beating expertly around the bush, helped by years of experience in being passive and neutral.

On the fourth day after the accidental death and purposeful revival, Gavin walked into the office to find Ryan already siting at his computer. Gavin noticed the long sleeves and the jeans, even though it was a very hot day.

It took him a second to remember how to move, and a full minute to reach his own computer as he slowly walked along the walls, giving as wide a berth as he possibly could between two incompatible bodies.

Being in a accident brings a certain notoriety to a person and Ryan did not escape this. All day long people swarmed around him to ask him questions, check on him and generally made him the center of all attention.

It didn’t take long before Gavin was fuming, sitting at his own desk and looking resolutely at the screen and trying to block out everything as they all touched Ryan and patted him on the shoulder and shook his hand and were normal with him. Had he been a little more open to introspection, Gavin would have probably noticed what he was feeling was jealousy.

Michael, on the other hand, had no trouble identifying that jealousy.

“Why don’t you go and hug him or something?” he whispered to Gavin, mindful of not being overheard by Ryan or any of the people cramped in the tiny office trying to talk to the miraculous survivor.

Gavin turned dispirited eyes towards him. “Hug who why?”

“Don’t be stupid. Or at least try to be less stupid than you usually are. You took two days off work to spend them with him and now you’re back you’re avoiding him as if he had the fucking plague. Did you two have a fight or something?”

Now Gavin’s jealousy was replaced by sadness.

Having a fight would justify being apart and not touching each other ; but as it were everything was going well, and it only made the fact that Gavin could never touch Ryan again just that little more depressing.

“No, we haven’t had a fight. It’s just… a thing.”

“Oh it’s a thing?”

“Yeah, a thing.”

“I didn’t know you were capable of having things. You’re the most un-things-having person I know. You avoid things more than you’re avoiding Ryan.”

“I have lots of things. I’m made of things. I just usually ignore the things.”

“So that’s a thing you can’t ignore?”

“Pretty much.”

Michael was looking at him oddly. Gavin was starting to think he’d better get used to this kind of looks.

Then Michael turned towards Ryan and shouted “Hey Rye-Bread! Gavin’s got a thing for you!”

All the heads in the office turned as one towards Gavin, whose cheeks were feeling very, very hot. He looked at them, they looked at him, he looked at Ryan, Ryan looked back, and Gavin bolted out of his chair and out of the office, mumbling a lie about needing to get something to drink.

***************************************************

Gavin was considering just how much of a dickbag Michael was as he sat on the curb in front of the office, holding a can of Red Bull which had become too warm to be enjoyable about thirteen minutes ago. Then he considered the fact that Michael was right, but that still didn’t make him less of a dickbag. Finally, he considered running away when he saw Ryan get out of the building, notice him, and start walking towards him.

“Why did you run away?” asked Ryan, and Gavin frowned.

“I didn’t. I only considered it.”

“You ran out of office twenty minutes ago and still haven’t returned.”

“Oh, that running away,” said Gavin with a slow nod of understanding. “Maybe you can ask Michael. Apparently he’s too bloody happy to talk for me. The little f–”

“Listen, Gav, you’re not exactly the most subtle person I’ve ever met,” cut in Ryan as he sat down next to Gavin.

“What does that mean?” asked Gavin, scooting a little farther away.

“It means I know you have a 'thing’ for me. I knew about it before the accident. I wanted to talk to you about it, eventually… Then I died and you bring me back and apparently there’s only me and your cat -which makes me wonder if you like me like a pet, or if you like your cat a little bit too much, but all right- and you just accept to spend two days with me without a moment’s hesitation. Do you really think I’m that blind?”

“…” said Gavin, which accurately translated his state of mind at this very moment.

“You on the other hand, seem to be blind as a bat.”

“…”

“I invited you to stay with me in the first place, I never pushed you away, and I’m ready to accept that you might love your cat a little too much–”

“Now wait a minute!!”

“–and I’m only screwing with you about that cat thing,” finished Ryan with a small laugh. “I like reeling you up. Sorry. You get all agitated and I think it’s… cute.”

“Cute?”

Ryan nodded curtly. “Cute.”

Had anyone else said this, Gavin might have thought this was ridiculous, or even taken offence -he was not 'cute’, thank you very much. But he could see that Ryan meant more than just 'cute’, and at that moment he could have sworn he’d swallowed butterflies.

Ryan’s hand rose from where it was resting on his knee and made an attempt at travelling towards Gavin. Gavin immediately flinched back and Ryan’s hand stopped mid-air, drooping a little as if it had been offended. It retracted slowly, back onto Ryan’s knee.

“Sorry,” said Gavin.

“Nah, it’s fine.”

“It’s not that I don’t want to touch you, huh.”

“I know. I just forgot for half a second. It was a nice half second…” finished Ryan in a mumble.

A moment of silence passed as Gavin reflected on just how much his life sucked. It was broken by Ryan musing, “This is going to be so cheesy.”

“What?” asked Gavin, looking at the man.

Ryan made his hand disappear into his long sleeve, and brought it to his lips to put a kiss on it. Then he reached out and put the kissed little patch of fabric on Gavin’s cheek, and he smiled crookedly.

Gavin rubbed at his cheek and considered the fact that his internal thermostat might be damaged, because his cheeks were heating up again.

“Yeah. This was cheesy as hell,” he said, and immediately after he slipped his own hand inside his sleeve and did the exact same thing to Ryan.

“See? There are ways around it,” said Ryan with twinkle in his eyes. “You don’t need to run away.”

***************************************************

If Gavin had to choose a word for his life, 'bittersweet’ would be it.

He’d given up on his passivity in favor of loving someone, which felt nice, but he was suffering for it at the same time. He had a boyfriend, and one he’d wanted to have for quite a while, but he couldn’t touch him except through cloth and plastic sheets. 

They kept coming up with new ways to touch without touching, but Gavin wanted to do all the things normal people did. But then, if Gavin had been a normal person, he wouldn’t have a boyfriend. Ryan would have been six feet under at this very moment.

Their apparent reluctance to stand next to each other for more than a few seconds made it so that their relationship stayed secret for quite some time, even without them wanting to hide it. But their co-workers understood eventually, although they did not understand everything. 

“I knew you weren’t exactly touchy-feely but that’s ridiculous,” said Geoff one day.

“What’s what?” asked Gavin.

“You and Ryan. You could at least, I don’t know, sit next to each other or something.”

“We’re fine how we are,” promised Gavin.

“Whatever. It’s your own problem.”

The day after that, Gavin moved in with Ryan.

The day even after that one, Ryan got rid of his double bed and bought two separate beds instead, which he put on opposite sides of the bedroom. He also hung a plastic sheet from the ceiling that separated the couch in two, which allowed the two of them to sit close to each other whenever they watched TV.

They started living together.

***************************************************

Nine months, two weeks, three hours and one minute after the fateful car accident, Gavin woke up to find Ryan’s bed empty. The man was in the kitchen, sitting at the table in his pyjamas, watching Lloyd who for her part was sitting on the table and licking her paw diligently.

“Hello,” greeted Gavin, without getting a response. “…Slept well?”

“How old is Lloyd?” asked Ryan.

“I don’t know. Old.”

“You know cats are supposed to only live for like 15 years, at most.”

“So?”

“So she’s older than that and she looks fine.” Ryan’s eyes snapped away from the cat to settle on Gavin. “Am I ever going to die?”

“I don’t know,” answered Gavin immediately and honestly. “I have no idea.”

Ryan’s mouth twisted for a while as he thought.

“Okay,” he said finally. “Want coffee?”

“Okay? What okay?”

“Just okay. What do you want me to say?”

Gavin opened his mouth but closed it again. 

“Okay,” he said, and sat down on a chair close, but not too close, to Ryan’s.

***************************************************

Life continued, often more sweet than bitter, and sometimes so bitter it made Gavin forget that it could be sweet too. 

He was not exactly careless or reckless. He was simply used to not caring about a lot of things, including where he put his own feet. It often led him to trip over the slightest thing, and it led him one day to falling down a flight of stairs at work.

He hit his head somewhere and his thoughts became a muddled mush of wet cotton. When finally reality snapped back in place, Gavin was looking up at Ryan's very worried face.

Gavin’s shin started hurting like it wanted to break away from the rest of his body. He needed to get to a hospital. But Ryan simply stayed crouched next to him, looking horribly sad. It was Geoff who took things in hand, and Ryan followed morosely as Gavin was held and helped by someone else.

“I hate crutches,” declared Gavin at home that night, his cast leg propped up on a pillow as he sat on his bed.

“I hate you,” grumbled Ryan.

Gavin blinked. “Well that took a turn…”

Ryan, lying down on his own bed and looking up at the ceiling like it owed him something, tried to clarify his thoughts. “You could be careful. It’s easy not to fall down the stairs, hundreds of people do it every day. You just have to watch where you put your own damn two feet!”

“I didn’t do it on purpose!”

“You do nothing on purpose. Maybe you could start by purposefully not falling over every two days.”

Gavin scowled and rolled onto his uninjured side and closed his eyes. He wasn’t in the mood to argue against such blatant injustice.

Ryan’s voice rose again.

“Do you think this is working? Us not touching each other? One day that’s going to come back and bite us in the ass.”

“It’s going well with Lloyd,” argued Gavin.

“Lloyd’s a cat. I’d like to think I’m a little more than that, and so are you. What if one day you’re in life-threatening trouble and we’re alone? And I can’t touch you?”

“Call an ambulance.”

“What if I can’t.”

“… Smoke signals?”

“Gavin!”

Gavin sighed and flopped on his back. It was his turn to look at the ceiling as if it held the answers to all questions.

“Okay… if you want us to break up, I understand. I just don’t want it to happen. I want to stay with you, even if it’s hard and it’s weird and even though you’re a prick with a smug attitude.”

A moment’s silence.

“You’re calling me smug? Holy crap. Either that’s irony, or I’m the worst person on earth.”

“Shut up. You’re mean.”

“You started it…”

Gavin rolled back to where he was, and closed his eyes again. “Can we talk about all this tomorrow?”

“Yeah. Sure.”

***************************************************

“Snuggies,” said Ryan the very next day.

It was the first thing he said to Gavin upon waking up, too, since he opened his eyes to find Ryan crouching next to his bed.

“Hmmm?”

“Snuggies are what we need. They’re blankets, but with sleeves.”

“… you all right? Did you hit your head?”

“Yes, and I died from it, but that’s not the point. Snuggies would allow us to touch each other as long as we seal the end of the sleeves to make sure hands don’t accidentally slip out.”

Gavin wondered where that thought had come from and why on earth did Ryan have it after the discussion they’d had the night before, but he agreed nonetheless. They bought two of these ridiculous thing that same morning.

The very next night Gavin had a nightmare. He woke up screaming and thrashing and almost hit Ryan in the face when he saw his silhouette hovering above him.

“Gav, calm down! It’s just a nightmare, you’re fine.”

It wasn’t 'just’ a nightmare by any means, but Gavin calmed down nonetheless, his panicking mind anchored by Ryan’s smooth voice. Enough to see that Ryan had slipped on his snuggie.

Gavin took about two seconds to consider just how ridiculous that looked, and then gave up the fight and threw himself in Ryan’s blanket-covered arms.

“I dreamt you were dead and I couldn’t bring you back,” he mumbled pitifully.

“That’s how everyone but you feels all the time,” said Ryan thoughtfully.

“You’re not helping.”

“Sorry.”

Ryan tightened his hug a little more.

“I think we can stay together,” he said. “We just need to tone down the smug-prick-ness, and use snuggies.”

Gavin closed his eyes, lost in the warmth of the hug and the scent of Ryan.

“Fine.”

“We’ve found ways to make this work so far, there’s no reason we can’t continue. We just need to be careful, right?”

“Right,” said Gavin, scrunching up his nose. “We’ll find ways around it.”

“Exactly.”

Ryan climbed onto the bed, careful not to jostle Gavin’s broken leg or to let any part of skin touch. Once he was comfortably settled by Gavin’s side, they both relaxed, happy in the knowledge that it really was as easy as this.

“Hey,” said Ryan after a second of comfortable silence, “will you still love me when you’re eighty years old and I’m still young and spry?”

Gavin started laughing. “No. I will be too jealous to function. I’ll hate you and divorce you.”

“That’s what I thought. So we have approximately fifty-three years before we break up. Better make the best of it.”

"You know those snuggies look absolutely ridiculous."

"I know. We should take pictures."

From then on they resolved to take problems one at a time and deal with it, turn it around, put it upside down, and beat it up until it ran away crying. Love conquers all, or at least that was what a lot of books and movies liked to say. They were just testing the theory.

And life kept continuing, at least for some people, and Gavin and Ryan chose to turn the bitter into sweet.


End file.
